


Thus Friends Absent Speak

by MarnaNightingale, Skud



Series: All the King's Men [5]
Category: Hornblower
Genre: Epistolary, M/M, polyfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-12
Updated: 2004-10-12
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:21:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarnaNightingale/pseuds/MarnaNightingale, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skud/pseuds/Skud
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>In terms of canon, this is set the longish gap between "Frogs and Lobsters" and "Mutiny".</p><p>Many of the naval details herein (and not a small part of Pellew's letters, which we have plundered mercilessly for quotes) were found in "The Life of Edward Pellew, Viscount Exmouth" by C. Northcote Parkinson.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Thus Friends Absent Speak

**Author's Note:**

> In terms of canon, this is set the longish gap between "Frogs and Lobsters" and "Mutiny".
> 
> Many of the naval details herein (and not a small part of Pellew's letters, which we have plundered mercilessly for quotes) were found in "The Life of Edward Pellew, Viscount Exmouth" by C. Northcote Parkinson.

_"Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls. For, thus friends absent speak."  
\-- John Donne, 1572-1631_

**PART I. REFITTING**

12th January, 1800  
Logbook of the HMS _Indefatigable_

... at 4 Bec du Raz S by E 5 or 6 miles, at 5 hove to, St. Matthieu's Light NNE ½ E 4 Leagues. a.m. at 2 Sounded in 50 fath's, found the Ship drifting to the South'd, at ½ past 6 saw the Breakers under our Lee &amp; attempted to Wear, at ½ past 7 the Ship Struck upon the Saints, two minutes after the Tide floated her off, let go the small Bower Anchor, and brought her up with a whole Cable, Clewed up the Sails and out the Boats to Sound got a spring upon the Cable, ¾ past 7 set Sail and cast the Ship to the Southward, Cut the Cable and stood to the SW clear of the Breakers, at 10 Bec du Raz NNE ½ E 7 Leagues. Saw a Lugger on the lee Bow. Made all Sail in Chase, performed Divine Service.

* * *

18th January, 1800  
HMS _Indefatigable_, off Brest

My dear Alexander,

By the date of your last letter, which is now before me, I am deserving some reproach for neglecting you so long, but as you have therein set my heart at ease with respect to Broughton I went to sleep satisfied that whatever interruption might happen in our correspondence none could happen to our friendship. When I received your note I was very much in the dumps, having being ordered under Lord Hood, who had directed me to watch and prey off Brest, where I have been Nov, Dec'r and Jan'y, and in the most charming weather as I am sure you can imagine. However, we have weathered all storms and by God's providence have escaped from shipwreck even by a miracle -- we have also been taking and re-taking a few small things just to pay the Mess, and in that matter have been very fortunate indeed.

The Indy is ordered into port this very day to repair a good deal of damage, as she took a most delightful thump upon a bed of rocks called les Pont des Saints. I believe we must look at her bottom in a dock, for which purpose we are proceeding to Plymouth -- and I gladly ask how you do, and even have the impudence to ask that you answer me speedily that I may reply ere we leave Plymouth again.

Yours,

Ed. Pellew

* * *

22nd January, 1800  
HMS _Indefatigable_, Plymouth

Dear Alexander,

We shall be coming into Plymouth tonight or tomorrow and I know not how long we shall be here, but you did ask me to be sure and tell you should we come into port. We have a deal in the way of repairs to see about, for we got the worst of a dispute with a French rock, and I readily confess that in the matter of rocks the French are as fortified and well-stocked as we and may even be our superiors -- by the end of the night I thought they might well set up to rival Scotland -- and until we come in and are able to get a clear sight of the damage it is impossible to say what she shall require nor what leave I shall have or if it will suffice to come up to London -- I fear not, but if you should chance to be free of other commitments and should choose to come or if I can get leave to go something might be managed.

Yr affectionate friend,

Archie.

* * *

22nd January, 1800  
London

Dear Edward,

I have no wish to reproach you for anything, least of all for irregularity of correspondence, which (God knows) is common enough among those of us in the King's service; I should by no means wish to cast the first stone, for it is only my current inactivity which allows me to reply so quickly in this instance. Indeed, having no better occupation at the moment -- you might think it was Peace, for all the sitting around we do -- I think I shall have to come to Plymouth and see what entertainment may be had there. It cannot help but be better than I have had here of late, in sitting about at Horse Guards for what seems like weeks on end, with no better excitement than the occasional new batch of Mr Baker's rifles to try out, and in truth one of my Captains is well able to handle the trials, and I attend merely to alleviate my boredom.

In any case, I shall set out for Plymouth tomorrow, and expect to be there the day after. Will you dine with me on Saturday? I shall be at the Dolphin, as usual. Apropos, I have some reason, you recollect, to think that one of your Lieutenants may request leave while I am in town; I am at least writing to inform him of my presence, and hope he will be sufficiently pleased as to wish to see me, and can be spared to come ashore.

Yours, as ever,

Alexander

* * *

25th January, 1800  
The Dolphin Inn, Plymouth

Dear Kennedy,

I am in Plymouth attending to some business, and could not help but notice the Indefatigable in harbour. If your Captain will permit you leave, and your time is not taken up entirely with other matters, perhaps you would care to join me for an evening's entertainment?

Edrington

* * *

26th January, 1800  
HMS _Indefatigable_, Plymouth

Dear Alexander,

Perhaps I would care to join you? Horatio claims I squeaked with glee when I heard that you were here already, but I will not admit to any more than an exclamation of surprise at finding you so nearby, which I take it means you have not had _my_ letter, which I sent to you in London, and at any rate I am not the only one who whose letters included a pleasing surprise -- I recognised the hand on one of his -- so he has no right to tease me about your invitation, any more than he may prevent me from accepting it, though I did fear at one point that he might attempt it -- there were some days of exceedingly cool weather to be borne and I was quite at a loss, for I hate to have any want of candour between us; and yet I found myself for almost the first time in all our friendship disinclined to fall in with his notion of how we ought to go on and so there was nothing to do but wait and let him see that my affection for him had in no way altered.

But look how I wander -- I am quite certain this is more than you cared to hear on the matter, when I only meant to say that you were not far out in your estimate when we spoke last summer, but I think there is no cause to worry about it any more. It is as impossible to talk about a thing on board ship as it is to conceal any kind of coolness, but I believe we understand each other at least a little and, well, he makes an effort and so do I.

I hope your business is well concluded and you have time to spare, as we now expect to have ample shore leave, the Indy requiring half her hull to be replaced, which will take weeks and weeks and while that will occupy a great deal of my time there will still be leisure enough for a friend or two. I shall call upon you tomorrow at dinner-time, and trust to your kindness to feed me well, for I am as sick of salt beef and biscuit as I am of winter in the channel!

Archie

* * *

30th January, 1800  
The Dolphin Inn, Plymouth

Lt. Hornblower. Dear Sir,

I pray you will give me the pleasure of your company alongside Mr Kennedy, at Sherborne Lodge in Dorsetshire next week. I am sure your captain will spare you for a few days, if you will remember me kindly to him.

Yr servant,

Edrington

* * *

30th January, 1800  
The Dolphin Inn, Plymouth

Archie,

Don't let him wriggle out of it. Trust me.

A.E.

* * *

Jan 31, 1800  
The Mark of Friendship, Plymouth

Alexander,

We shall be most pleased to come. At least, I am pleased now and he, I trust, shall be pleased hereafter -- in the meantime I have a strategy or two of my own, and he is at least resigned. What are you up to?

I do trust you. With reason, My Lord.

Archie.

* * *

8th February, 1800  
HMS _Indefatigable_, Plymouth

My dear boy,

I see that Pandarus has decided to claim his fee -- I cannot decide whether they will have wore you out or the reverse, though if experience is any guide, after some sleep they shall be all the better for it -- when did you set up as a sort of shipyard for junior officers? -- and as delightful as it is to contemplate, in either case you have had them a week and more now, and I fear it is time for me to demand their return.

You notice I do not play the mother hen this time, for you managed my wounded chick well enough and this one was, I think, only a little unsure of his wings. I trust you will have -- if I may extend my first metaphor -- scraped off a few of his barnacles, ensured that his bottom is as sound as might be, his mast attended to, &amp;c &amp;c.

(Apropos, you may stand as firm as ever upon your chosen ground in the matter of innocents, but I take the liberty to tease you a little -- you avoid perjury on that point entirely as a result of your own efforts last year. Do you think that debauching by proxy accords quite with the spirit of the policy?)

If I could trust the Plymouth Dock to attend as well to the Indefatigable as I am sure you have to her officers I would have no need to deprive you of their company, but yours is the only shipyard I know that can be depended upon to do its very best without close and constant supervision -- though I confess I hope some time to indulge myself in a careful tour of the facilities -- I know for a fact that you have one of the hardest-working yards in the kingdom. Alas, much as I would wish to inspect it, I fear duty ties me to Plymouth and to the varied joys of the victualling yard, the cooperage, the armory, and endless paperwork to be signed &amp; counter-signed &amp; checked &amp; copied, and the purser knocking constantly at the door of my cabin as he is even now, so I must beg you to relieve me of some of my burden by sending back my two lieutenants with all haste. We sail on the 16th inst.

Adieu,

Edward

* * *

9th February, 1800  
Sherborne Lodge, Dorsetshire

Dear Edward,

As much as I hesitate to risk disturbing your flattering notions of the measure of my powers, there is such a thing in this world as a pie -- however appealing -- that I can keep my fingers out of. Knowing the Navy Board's thoughts on yards outside their own control, I did not see fit to take too much upon myself, but I can assure you that what I saw of his bottom, mast, &amp;c. seemed to be in excellent trim, probably due to the care with which they are attended to by the Navy's own entirely adequate facilities.

I shall send this note by return post, and follow it -- with your lieutenants -- first thing tomorrow. You will have them back after dinner, and you may see then what care I have taken of them. If you wish to inspect your shipyard -- and how did I come to take such a naval countenance, pray? -- I shall be at the Dolphin.

Your golden (I fear soon silver-trimmed -- this business of refitting demands a great deal of a man, and I do not refer only to the strain on the capabilities of the yard, so you may cease that unseemly snorting, sir!)

Alexander

* * *

**PART II. PROMOTION**

6th April, 1800  
HMS _Indefatigable_, off Brest

Dear Alexander,

You make me feel positively decrepit. If I had not been firm with you and kept you properly in hand all those years ago, I think you might easily have been the death of me, but now there is nobody to keep you in check I fear you will be the death of uncountable others, for if your prodigious energies have in any way diminished in the intervening years it is a difference I am unable to detect on even the closest examination. Do you not have a war to fight? Or do you merely ride towards the enemy and wait for them to fall at your feet -- I think we ought to have made you an envoy, for I am sure we might own the Continent by now if we had!

I could not help but notice your hand upon another of the letters that came aboard today. I am sure you will get his reply as soon as mine, so I need not inform you that he is hale and hearty and suffering not at all under the monotony of the blockade. To tell the whole truth, he seems as happy now as I have ever known him -- by which I mean the last shadows appear to have fallen away, or nearly so -- as much as one may expect, I think -- which I imagine is in no small part your doing, whether directly or indirectly, for which I am sure H~ thanks you as much as do I. He will do great honour to his commission when he receives it -- soon, I believe.

You will have heard that we are to have a new Commander-in-Chief, heaven be praised. The old one is scarcely worth drowning: a more contemptible or more miserable animal does not exist, a mixture of ignorance, avarice and spleen. I believe there never was a man so universally despised by the whole service. St Vincent is to replace him, which cannot fail to be an improvement, and perhaps at last I may be shot of this wretched drudgery. Blockade duty is no place for a frigate.

I told you, did I not, that the Indefatigable would be polishing Ushant for six months? It has been nine, and nine very long months at that, and if Old Jarvie sees fit to send me elsewhere, though it be the ends of the earth, I shall be heartily glad of it.

Yours,

Edward

PS - added in haste on the 20th April, as the boat has come with mail, and will soon depart again with dispatches &amp;c. Spencer has offered me a promotion into a ship of the line, but I do not yet know what will come of it. Yrs, E. P.

* * *

11th April, 1800  
Whitehall

Dear Sir,

The extensive Promotion of Flag Officers which His Majesty has been pleased to authorize me to make brings you so high on the Captains' List that it is no longer consistent with the ordinary Practice of the Service that you should continue to serve in a Frigate: I have therefore given you an Appointment to the Impetueux as being the most active and desirable Line of Battle Ship which the Arrangement on this occasion enabled me to select for you, and I have no doubt but that you will in this new Line of Service continue to gain as much Credit as you have already, by the Acknowledgement of every one who knows you, obtained.

Believe me Dear Sir  
your very faithful  
humble Servant  
Spencer

* * *

20th April, 1800  
HMS _Indefatigable_, Falmouth

My Lord,

I know not how to express my surprise on the receipt of your Lordship's very unexpected letter. I cannot help but feel very sensible of your Lordship's attention to me in the selection you have been pleased to make, but had I conceived that the intended arrangement of the promotion could have affected my situation in the command of the Indefatigable, I should have most earnestly entreated your forbearance, and shall now feel myself highly gratified if your Lordship will permit me to continue in my present situation, amidst officers and men who have served under me through the War, and who look up to me for protection.

If my request should not meet your approbation, I indulge myself with the expectation of being permitted to remove with me such officers and young gentlemen as I shall point out, and I confide in your Lordship's goodness for throwing me as much into active service as possible. I have the honour to be, My Lord,

Your Lordship's  
Most Obed't  
And very Hble Serv't  
Ed. Pellew

* * *

Falmouth Packet Newspaper, 23rd April, 1800

The following squadron under Commodore Sir Edward Pellew, Bart., previously of His Majesty's Ship _Indefatigable_, is shortly to set sail for the coast of France with, it is said, fresh succours for the Chouans: _L'Impetueux_ 74 guns, _Adventure_ 44, _Cambria_ 38, _La Tamise_ 32 guns, _Shannon_ 32.

* * *

28th April, 1800  
London

My dear and decrepit Commodore,

I write in great haste, the Regiment being at last called away -- and of course now we are to be ready on the instant -- to wish you joy of your new command, and to tell you that if you wish to believe that you ever had me properly in hand in any figurative sense, I will not gainsay it, for you have at least over the years made certain I know better than to disrespect my elders unless I wish to reap the crop that impudence sows.

Your golden boy,

A.

* * *

28th April, 1800  
London

Dear Lieutenant Kennedy,

I do not know whether first to congratulate or remonstrate with you. Not only did Sir Edward write to inform me of your commission, but Mr Hornblower also sent me a note, which is such a rarity that for a moment I feared some misadventure must have befallen you, and yet I heard no word from you yourself. Am I to assume that you have been overcome by modesty, or were your celebrations so merry as to leave you incapable? In any case, I shall drink a toast to you tonight, and hope you may soon find occasion to write to your friend,

Alexander

* * *

7th May, 1800  
HMS _Renown_

My Lord,

It is my pleasurable duty to inform you of the happenings aboard Her Majesty's Ship Renown since setting sail on the 26th ult, and now stationed in the Downs at 51° 19' N 1° 25'. Do you like my dispatch style, Alexander? I thought I had better practice, for one day soon I may need it. I am commissioned at last! By the time you receive this, it will be old news: St Vincent has replaced Lord Hood in command of the Channel fleet (we drank heartily at that news), Captain Pellew given command of the Impetueux, 74 (at which we drank again), and my own commission confirmed (at which we drank a third time, and indeed a fourth, and it was a miracle that I was able to stand to have my new uniform fitted the next day.)

The end result of it all? I find today that Horatio has been ahead of me with the news, and I am quite disgraced -- I am sorry, Alexander. I was too merry -- or to be plain, rather, incapable of so much as an unslurred word -- though I woke with ink-stained fingers -- and face -- does that scant evidence and Horatio's word that the results were far better burnt at once than sent at least assure you that it was not you but only the language of Milton and Shakespeare that were forgotten in my shameful state? For some time thereafter, we were dashing around like madmen, and -- the sum of it is, I quite deserve to have Horatio steal my thunder -- and talking of thunder, in the face of his disapproval when he learnt that I had not written, I felt quite like a schoolboy again -- and so I must beg your forgiveness on my knees, and hope that you will allow me to make amends.

As you can see I am now aboard the Renown, a third rate, under Captain Sawyer, who fought on the Glorious First of June and at the Nile, and Horatio is with me. We are third and fourth -- which is to say, he is third lieutenant and I am fourth, of course -- which is more lieutenants than were ever aboard the old Indy, so as you can imagine the wardroom is quite a menagerie. But such a spacious menagerie! Compared to the dark cabin that served us in the Indy, this is luxury indeed, and I feel positively sybaritic, with my paper spread out across the broad table, bathed in the light from the stern windows. Horatio sits opposite me with his nose buried in a stack of charts, but asks me to send you his warmest regards, which duty I am happy to perform. Apropos, it lacks but a few minutes til the turn of the watch, and I must be on deck. I will send this with the supply boat tomorrow.

Yours, fondly,

Lieutenant Archie Kennedy

* * *

8th May, 1800  
HMS _Impetueux_, Spithead

My dear boy,

I thank you for the disrespect you send me in the guise of respect, rogue, for at least it brought some small cheer amongst the unmitigated tribulations which I currently bear. You cannot have known it when you wrote to express your congratulations, but the ship of which I am now Captain is notorious in the fleet as the most mutinous afloat.

A ship of the line is a step up, certainly, and a squadron even more so, and I suppose I must be thankful for the high opinion in which the Admiralty holds me, but I am sorry to admit that I am unmoved by the honour, for they have allowed me to bring none of my followers, none of the officers or men which custom dictates may follow a captain from one ship to the next. I am sent here amidst entire strangers and without being permitted to take so much as one man with me. The Admiralty no doubt presume that I have no sensibility, no attachment, no feeling, that I can part from faithful and attached companions, grown from boys to manhood under me, without a sorrowful countenance or a moistened eye, and that I can come amongst such a mutinous assembly as the crew of this vessel without the safety provided by men I know and trust. They may rot in hell who believe such things; language does not furnish words sufficiently strong to express my feelings upon such unmerited hard treatment.

My Horatio is gone to the Renown under Captain Sawyer, and Kennedy as well, as you no doubt know; some of my best and loyalest ratings have gone with them, and Sawyer does not deserve a one of them, for all he is a hero of the Nile and more besides. I was not ready for him to leave the nest, Alexander, had not accustomed myself to the idea that we might at any time be separated by distance and duty. It was foolish to think that the Indefatigable could be mine forever, and in my rational mind I know that such a thing can never be assured in the Service however fervently we might wish it, but rationality does not lessen the pain.

I am sorry I cannot write light, amusing words to you; you must be content with the melancholy ravings of an old man.

Yours, as ever,

Edward


End file.
